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A dry, warm winter set the stage for dozens of wildfires currently threatening populated areas in New South Wales, Australia. The fires have destroyed hundreds of homes and sent smoke and ash into the air over Sydney. The region, which is now entering summer, also experienced hundreds of fires this January during a catastrophic heat wave. The past three months have been among the driest 10 percent on record in New South Wales (NSW), said Todd Lane, a meteorologist at the University of Melbourne....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. You’ve probably got the fruits of this year’s Nobel laureates’ handiwork in your pocket. In fact, if you’re reading this on your phone or a relatively recent flat-screen monitor, you’re more than likely staring at some of them right now. The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura for their pioneering work on blue LEDs, or light-emitting diodes....

January 1961 Mechanism of Immunity “Although the practical problems of immunization have been solved, immunology remains an important branch of medicine. The immunologist of today, however, is not so much interested in finding out how to immunize people more effectively against diphtheria or poliomyelitis as he is concerned with understanding what happens when people become immune. He asks more sophisticated questions than in the past. For example: Why can a surgeon successfully graft skin or other tissue from one part of the body to another but not from one individual to another, except in the case of grafts between identical twins?...

A few weeks ago, I saw a cute online cartoon titled “Introvert Starter Kit,” with drawings of fuzzy pants, a cup of herbal tea, a stack of books, and a cat. I searched for an extrovert equivalent, but none were to be found. The introvert revolution, for all its good, has negatively stereotyped extroverts as fast-talking spotlight-hogging party animals. For better or worse, my guess is that an “extrovert starter kit” would feature a bullhorn, one of those double-barrelled beer can hats, and a red plastic Solo cup....

APRIL 1955 VIRUS REPLICATION–“A new view of the nature of viruses is emerging. They used to be thought of solely as foreign intruders–strangers to the cells they invade and parasitize. But recent findings, including the discovery of host-induced modifications of viruses, emphasize more and more the similarity of viruses to hereditary units such as genes. Indeed, some viruses are being considered as bits of heredity in search of a chromosome. –Salvador E....

Amoebae — a group of amorphous, single-celled organisms that live in the human body — can kill human cells by biting off chunks of intestinal cells until they die, a new study finds. This is the first time scientists have seen this method of cell killing, and the new findings could one day help treat parasitic infections that kill children across the globe, the researchers said. Investigators analyzed the amoeba Entamoeba histolytica....

Mike Kretlow had planned carefully and traveled for days—flying from Germany to Namibia, then driving into South Africa toward the Kalahari Desert—all in search of clear skies for a brief appointment with a rare celestial alignment only visible from that decidedly off-grid vantage point. A blanket of clouds nearly scuttled his trip, but luck prevailed: With scant time to spare, Kretlow broke into open sky, convinced some locals to let him set up his telescope on their property and watched as a small world called Quaoar at the edge of the solar system passed in front of a star, dipping the star’s light for barely two minutes....

MARCH 10 There is still plenty we do not know about language. For instance, scientists recently uncovered a language called Koro, spoken by only 800 people in northeastern India. And another study showed that we automatically distrust what people say when they speak with a foreign accent. As Harvard University psychologist Alfonso Caramazza will explain in a lecture, scientists often make inferences about how the normal language system works by examining people who have damage to the areas of the brain that process language....

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. You probably heard about Pfizer and BioNTech’s announcement on Monday (11/9/20) that early results of their large-scale Phase 3 human study of a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 show that it has a whopping 90 percent effectiveness. The results have not yet been published or scrutinized by outside experts, but no one anticipated such a positive result and many scientists are excited (although note cautious reaction of Dr....

When it comes to determining the size of giant squid and other large sea animals, humans have a tendency to exaggerate, a new study suggests. A team of researchers compared scientific and popular media reports of body sizes for 25 species of marine creatures, including whales, sharks, squids, and other giant ocean dwellers, and found that most of the animals were smaller than what was reported. “It’s human nature to tell a ‘fishing story,’” said Craig McClain, a marine biologist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina....

Coughing, chills, runny nose, and fatigue mean it’s that time of year again—the time when we spread holiday cheer and, well, the flu. Here at QDT we know what the flu is, how it’s different than the common cold, who is more susceptible to flu symptoms, and how to avoid getting and spreading the flu (like getting a flu shot!). You may also know that the flu shot changes each year, but how is the vaccine made?...

The bad news just keeps coming. The economy is reeling, the national jobless rate (nearly 7 percent) is the highest it’s been in over a decade, and forget about holiday gifts: most people will just be grateful if they don’t get pink slips in their stockings. And it could be worse: Just ask any of the thousands of people from celebs to senior citizens who gave their life savings to Bernard Madoff, the New York City financier who allegedly swindled investors out of an estimated $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme that may have spanned two decades....

Eleanor Sterling happened to be visiting the Galápagos Islands on June 24, 2012, the day Lonesome George died. George, the last of a species of giant tortoise unique to Pinta Island, had become an iconic symbol of the struggle to conserve disappearing species. Sterling had come to the islands on conservation business, but she dropped everything when she heard that George had expired. The first thing Sterling did was put in a call to George Dante, a New Jersey taxidermist....

California is aiming to increase vehicles’ fuel efficiency by reducing energy loss from deformed tires. The state Energy Commission last week proposed putting a fuel efficiency label on the top 15 percent of tires with the lowest rolling resistance within their size and load class. The rulemaking is in response to a 2003 law, A.B. 844, which requires the development of reporting requirements for tire manufacturers and a rating system for comparing tires’ fuel economy....

Every month, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—the longest-running magazine in the U.S. and an authoritative voice in science, technology and innovation—provides insight into scientific topics that affect our daily lives and capture our imagination, establishing the vital bridge between science and public policy. Available on iPad, print, and digital formats. MANUFACTURING • The next manufacturing revolution in developed countries will likely be in high-tech machinery, building a platform for new jobs. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN reviews some of the most promising areas, including:...

The notion that the state of our gut governs our state of mind dates back more than 100 years. Many 19th- and early 20th-century scientists believed that accumulating wastes in the colon triggered a state of “auto-intoxication,” whereby poisons emanating from the gut produced infections that were in turn linked with depression, anxiety and psychosis. Patients were treated with colonic purges and even bowel surgeries until these practices were dismissed as quackery....

Up to 90 percent of the warming caused by human carbon emissions is absorbed by the world’s oceans, scientists estimate. And researchers increasingly agree that the oceans are warming faster than previously thought. Multiple studies in the past few years have found that previous estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be too low. A new review of the research, published yesterday in Science, concludes that “multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed [ocean heat content] warming....

In 1995, divers noticed a beautiful, strange circular pattern on the seafloor off Japan, and soon after, more circles were discovered nearby. Some likened these formations to “underwater crop circles.” The geometric formations mysteriously came and went, and for more than a decade, nobody knew what made them. Finally, the creator of these remarkable formations was found: a newly discovered species of pufferfish. Further study showed these small pufferfish make the ornate circles to attract mates....

Ravens use their beaks and wings much like humans rely on our hands to make gestures, such as for pointing to an object, scientists now find. This is the first time researchers have seen gestures used in this way in the wild by animals other than primates. From the age of 9 to 12 months, human infants often use gestures to direct the attention of adults to objects, or to hold up items so that others can take them....

See sea horses, stingrays, octopuses, nudibranchs and other marine creatures as you have never seen them before. Photographer Mark Laita borrowed a veritable ark of specimens to shoot in the black aquarium he built in his studio in Los Angeles. The result is a mesmerizing series of portraits of those enigmatic denizens of the deep. The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess by Jeff Wheelwright. W. W. Norton, 2012 In 1999 a Hispano woman named Shonnie Medina died at the age of 28 after refusing surgery for breast cancer....